


tears we bury

by hellstrider



Series: Scars 'verse [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Jon Snow Defense Squad, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Episode: s07e06 Beyond the Wall, Tormund Cannot Handle Jon Doing This Again, general dany warning, men with feelings, not Dany friendly, rip benjen stark u was a real one, this is the same universe as 'now let the healing start', tormund: how do i hold all these feelings without murdering him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:39:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19167844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellstrider/pseuds/hellstrider
Summary: could you fight death itself, wildling? could you win?





	tears we bury

**Author's Note:**

> again, title from 'scars' by tove lo. this is part of the "scars" universe i have going on tumblr; this is the same 'verse as 'now let the healing start'.

All the air punches from his lungs when he watches Jon fall through the ice. Clegane digs a heavy hand into the mantle of his furs, but Tormund wrenches himself free, roaring Jon’s name over the clash of dragonfire and snarling, ravenous undead. The dragon-queen shouts something to her beast and Tormund rips away from the others and tumbles down the dragon’s heaving sides as it readies to take to the air. 

_If you’d stayed and fought, you would have died with me._

_A good way to die._

“ _Jon!_ ” His voice is all but ripped away as the dragon-queen’s beast raises his wings and takes to the sky; someone shouts for him, but Tormund doesn’t heed it. He swings wildly at the clamor of undead as a gloved hand bursts from the ice - too long, he thinks in anguish, too long under, too long, he’ll be dead in hours.

And so too will he, then. 

Tormund slides down the snowbank and catches Jon’s arm, his grip made clumsy by the thick layers of fur and leather. His hammer shoots past him on the ice and sinks into the water. The dead are coming again, skittering around the pieces of ice they can clamber over, and Jon gasps like one of them when Tormund drags him from the depths of the water with fangs.

His lips are going blue already; Tormund gathers Jon close, hauling him up and away from the claws of the undead and what would’ve been his grave. He pulls Jon’s sword from its scabbard and thinks, for the first time, he might utter some kind of prayer to any god that might be listening. Jon heaves and coughs against his shoulder, shuddering with the ice-fever already and Tormund feels like he’s the one about to die. 

The dragon and his queen are gone, gone with what they came for - and they traded Jon Snow for it. Anger coils up in his gut and Tormund roars, feeling so savage he might froth as he drags Jon back, pressed between the snowbank and the waves of rotting bodies, their glowing blue eyes the most wicked kind of fire.

They’re surrounded. The dead keep coming in swells and waves, just like Hardhome, but this time they’ve no boats to carry them away. Tormund keeps his arm around Jon’s waist - he’s shivering violently, even through the furs - and drags him back as fast as he can as the ice cracks and splits beneath them. Jon clutches at his chest with fingers gone blue and his forehead is void of any warmth when he presses it to the wildling’s cheek.

 _Not now,_ he thinks desperately, barely able to breathe;  _not again. Not him._

“T-Tor,” Jon tries, a sob weakening his voice, but before Tormund can agonize over it, there’s a sound of hooves and he looks up with wild eyes as a figure all in black atop a black steed comes speeding over the ice. He readies to fight but then the figure swings down from his steed and rips his cowl back, and Jon’s face goes slack with shock.

“ _Uncle Benjen_ -?”

“Get him out!” the stranger bellows, and he’s got rot on his face, greying skin held frozen in time by some magic. “Go!”

Tormund doesn’t linger over who it is, or what he is; he hauls Jon up with the stranger’s help and swings into the saddle behind him, digging his heels into the beast’s sides as the stranger smacks the horse’s rear. Jon strains to look back as the horse - a strong beast, used to the slip of snow and the clutch of ice - takes off for the mountain path and away from the stream of death.

All he knows is the frantic thunder of his heart as he steers the steed farther and farther from the tangle below. The forest looms before them, dark and promising shelter, and Tormund briefly considers stopping to get Jon warm, but the distant shrieks and roars of the dead dissuade him quickly. 

Jon still shivers against him, sporadic jerks of his body that mean he’s still fighting, and if their horse lasts, they’ll be at the wall before the night comes. Tormund digs his heels in again and the beast snorts, tossing its head as it picks up to an almost impossible speed. They can’t slow down now, even though nothing chases them - the only enemy now is the cold that digs into Jon, just as it dug into the red priest.

Time becomes both a compress around him and a false thing, and then they’re breaking from the trees and Tormund pleads with the gods, any of them, old and new, the ones that made the walkers and the crows, because Jon has gone utterly still against him, no longer even shivering to warm himself up. The burn of tears threatens to choke him and the wildling bares his teeth, eyes stinging as he urges the horse on towards the tower of the wall just ahead.

A horn blares through the sky and a massive shadow takes flight, casting darkness over the glittering snow. Tormund pulls the horse to a skidding halt and the beast whinnies in panic as the white-haired queen and her dragon land, making the ground shake with a clap like thunder. He swings down and pulls Jon with him, a fist shut around his throat to see his face slack and gone grey.

 _Please_ , he thinks with a violence that feels comfortably familiar;  _take me, you fuckers, just leave him, please._

No god answers him. The white-haired queen’s face is struck with grief as her dragon ducks low, and together they manage to hoist Jon up, and his legs ache and scream with pain when he clambers up behind him. 

The stench of fire and blood surrounds the dragon, who struggles for a moment before lifting into the air. Tormund bows over Jon, pressing him between the back of the beast and his own body, tucking his little crow’s face into the crook of his neck. He breathes Jon’s name like a hymn, a plea that cracks over his tongue; he knows the dragon queen look back and doesn’t care, doesn’t give a damn what she sees.

The mad rush to get to Jon when they land makes his teeth ache, makes him want to bite through skin until he hits bone and copper floods his throat. Tormund lets Davos alone take one of Jon’s arms, and together they carry him down into the hull of the ship and to a cabin with a real bed. Without ceremony, Tormund tears through Jon’s furs as soon as they get him inside, and Davos helps him with movements grim and precise. 

“We need water,” Davos orders, “no warmer than your skin. And all the blankets you can carry. Now!" 

Someone hurries from the room to fetch water and blankets, but Tormund knows it won’t be enough. The lump in his throat swells to see the angry red scars over Jon’s chest, over his belly, so bright as his skin goes from pink to blue to grey. 

"Fuck the blankets,” Tormund growls, shoving his scabbard and sword into Davos’ hands. “Only one thing left to help him now.”

He drops his belt and his furs, steps out of his boots and underthings until he’s as nude as the day he was born, unabashed. He climbs into the bed beside Jon and gazes down at his face, still and serene and so, so cold. Grief and guilt clatter together in his chest as Tormund curls his arms around the little crow, unable to think about anything other than seeing those eyes open again, honey-brown and warmer than dragonfire.

“Will he make it?” Davos asks gruffly. 

“He’s not getting away from us,” Tormund growls, “not again.”

 _You utter cunt_ , he thinks painfully, tangling one hand into Jon’s thick hair to pull his head beneath his chin, warming his nose and cheeks against his chest. Jon’s breath comes in weak, wavering gusts and rattles in his lungs with the ice that clings to him still.  _You won’t leave me again. You can’t._

For a wild, blinding moment, all Tormund feels is a burning hatred for Jon  _fucking_  Snow, who has left him once before and tried to do it again after asking him to keep him. When he shuts his eyes all he sees is Jon on that damned table, unmoving and blood-soaked, gone from grey to white in the clutch of death. This is a fool’s choice, he thinks, to love someone like this, to love a man that lives at the edge of the abyss, because now he does too.

_Could you fight death itself, wildling? Could you win?_

For Jon, he would. Tormund grits his teeth until his jaw burns and gathers Jon as close as he can, tucking the crow up against his body to let him leech all the warmth from him. He tangles their legs carefully together, one huge hand keeping his head tucked to his shoulder, and when he presses his cheek to Jon’s temple, a shudder rips down his spine.

They come in and pile more blankets over them, not saying a word. Southern gentlefolk have their strange rules and their stranger ideas of what love is, of what it should be; he knows Winterfell’s been muttering about the pair of them and he knows Jon worries, but right now, he could care less if the entirety of the seven kingdoms knew. 

None of the other men say a word, however, and once the bed is heavy beneath their weight and what feels like every blanket in the ship, they’re left alone. Davos shuts the door without a word and Tormund slides a hand over Jon’s chest, presses his palm over his lukewarm skin. His heartbeat is weak, but there, and each breath wavers just a little less than the last.

Never had he imagined the little crow would burrow so deep beneath his skin and shatter there, but he had. He was drawn to him the moment he saw him, when those willful, fierce eyes threw a snare around his heart and pulled tight. Jon Snow, the little bastard from over the wall who lived like a wildling and who pulled that snare until it yanked the heart from his chest when he turned his back on them all. 

No god had listened when he begged for mercy then, either. 

_Do you remember what you said to me, that night at Castle Black?_

Impossible, incredible pain grips him. Tormund slides a hand down Jon’s spine, counts his own heartbeats as he nuzzles into the crown of his head and swallows down another weak prayer he doesn’t believe in. No god can help them now. No god will hold Jon close and will the warmth back into him, will the fire back to his heart. It is his duty and his alone, because Jon is his, and so he does.

_I might have hated you that night, Jon Snow, but you were still mine._

And he does hate him. He hates him as fiercely as he loves him; it’s violent and sharper than steel in his heart, constantly cutting at him, bleeding him dry. He’s felt what he thought was love before, but it was a thing with feathers, flighty and fluttering and then gone in the blink of an eye. 

This time it is a thing with teeth of iron, with more fire behind its tongue than any dragon. He would die for the little thing in his arms, would bleed and choke and weep for him, take any pain just to spare him a single moment of it. This kind of love, edged and red-eyed inside him, is the kind that kings fuel wars with, the kind of love that could topple even the red city of the south to the ground. 

So this is what he prays to, what he believes in. It’s dangerous, he knows; dangerous to put his entire heart into one person, but it happened so quickly and so suddenly and now he doesn’t know how to be without it.

Jon Snow has gone from ally to enemy to the man who died to save him and his people; he’s gone from king to lover to the center of the world as he knows it, and Tormund knows he would stare death in the face for him, all for him. It is a madness that grips him, digs through him to the marrow and burns with the heat of the sun. Tormund wonders, for a moment, if he was born only for this, because it’s suddenly the only damned thing to make any sense at all.

Jon shifts in his arms then, and his heart launches into his mouth when he huffs against his collarbone, curling one hand around the meat of Tormund’s ribs. His king curls into his warmth and Tormund’s belly grows tight when he nuzzles up into his neck like a cat, seeking more heat. 

“It’s alright,” he murmurs, sliding a careful hand through his hair, “you’re alright, my little crow.”

He lets out a soft groan, a sound that cuts through Tormund like a knife. The little crow is restless for a few moments, hands jittering over Tormund’s body until he curls his arms up against his chest, face burrowed into his shoulder and legs curled up between both of his own. He’s so small, so achingly small like this, and he bears such a weight over his shoulders, the heaviest kind of crown biting into his head.

_Could you set him free, wildling?_

_Could you pull that blade from his heart, the one that keeps him running to the tomb?_

All he wants is to set him free. When this is over, Tormund will steal him away, will take him back to the wild north, where they can breathe and run and fight and fuck, where the thundering wars of the south cannot touch them. He will take his king to the land that is his, take him far from this place and build him a hearth and home to keep him safe, where he can shed the world and its demands from his shoulders and finally, finally live.

So lost in that thought, Tormund doesn’t hear the footsteps in the corridor; when the door cracks open, he reaches for a knife that doesn’t exist. Jon shifts against him and he pulls him tight, casting a glance over his shoulder as the white-haired queen glides around the foot of the bed. Her gaze lingers over Jon, big eyes full of raw emotion, and she is silent as she comes to a halt a scant foot from the bedside. 

She’s a regal and beautiful thing, this dragon-mother, and an immense sorrow clings to her, the true sorrow of a parent that has watched one of their children fall. Tormund knows that sorrow well, has felt it too many times to ever think of bringing another life to the world. She still has two more to lose, and he almost pities her. 

He doesn’t much give a damn what she thinks she’s seeing; he stayed by Jon’s side on Dragonstone, never tried to hide just how much he’d do for his king. She isn’t a fool, either, and her gaze is shrewd and keen, almost curious, as it sweeps over them.

“Davos tells me he will recover,” she says after a beat, her melodic voice weary and heavy. 

“Aye,” Tormund grunts. “He’s not got another choice.”

Daenerys tilts her head, questions writ across her young face, and Tormund almost bites out a command for her to speak when she does.

“Is it true? That he took a knife to the heart?”

The bitterness rises in his throat. “Aye,” he rasps again, palm splaying over Jon’s back under the furs. “Brought my people over the wall. His other crows didn’t take it well.”

“And a Red Priestess - she brought him back.”

“The Red Woman, the gods, the damn devils - someone did. Never thought too much about it.” Tormund clenches his jaw. “Why?”

“Can you blame a queen for wondering what made a bastard of the north into a king?”

“He was their leader before it. The Crows.”

“And then be became yours,” she says, lifting her brows, and he can’t help but feel like she’s saying two things at once. “I have been reliably informed the Wild people beyond the wall do not easily bend the knee.”

“No northerner does,” Tormund huffs, and the dragon-queen’s lips twitch.

“I’ve noticed that.” Her voice is cold masquerading as amusement; she doesn’t pull it off well. Tormund drinks in the smooth plains of her face, ethereal and almost ageless. She’s a child, he thinks, a child playing at a game she thinks she can win by shattering every piece on the board. 

“It killed our first king, that damned taking a knee. A good man that wouldn’t fuckin’ kneel to some southern cunt calling himself king.”

“Is it so terrible?” the queen asks then, an edge coming to her voice. “Is it such an arrow to your pride, such a show of loyalty to a liege?”

Tormund bristles. What a place to pin him, where he cannot leave, arms full of his half-dead crow, heart still caught on a hook in his throat. The queen’s gaze is colder than Jon’s skin was, even though she claims to be a dragon, she must be carved of a glacier. He doesn’t trust her, doesn’t trust this queen from the east that demanded so much from his king and gave so little until she lost too much. 

Jon gave no thought to reward or loyalty when he brought his people south of the wall. His little crow gave no thought to knee-bending or power when he saved the lives of the Wildlings. This woman wants power and revenge, nothing more. 

He has seen the like thousands of times, has tasted the bitterness of that spite, felt the wrath of their hunger. Crowns are sometimes more intoxicating than any wine, than any whiskey, the mere thought to some sweeter than the taste of a lover. 

“You southerners hold bending the damn knee above true loyalty,” he says. “Never bowed to Mance, never bowed to the little crow. Would’ve died for Mance. You can be damn sure I’d die for this one.”

The silence following his words is thick, the dragon-queen’s brows arched and gaze unreadable aside from a vague sheen of imperious curiosity. 

“You care deeply for Jon Snow. Perhaps then you will advise him to do what is right for his people - for all people. The dead are coming, he was right about that.” A fierceness comes over her then, and Tormund might admire it if he didn’t distrust her like any other southern lord with a hunger for that damned throne. “I will kill the Night King for taking one of my children from me. But afterwards, if you do not wish to see another of your Kings -”

“You’d be wise to leave that threat behind your teeth, mother of dragons.”

It is said quietly but claps like thunder through the cabin. Daenerys lifts her chin as a mask of stone comes down over her, and Tormund thinks he is staring death in the face, right here, right now. Then, the dragon-queen steps back from the bed and is gone, shutting the door with a smart snap after her. 

Tormund lets the anger simmer away as Jon shifts again; he does not, unlike the rest of them, fear the dragon-queen and her fire, not after living a war of ice. He has seen far worse than the tempestuous white-haired queen, has tasted death on his tongue too many times before. She has tried to dig her claws into Jon once, and no doubt will try again. He’ll be here when she does.

No retribution for his words comes as the light fades outside. The peace remains, split only by the occasional call of the two dragons the queen has left, and Tormund thinks he must eventually drift off because when he next blinks, there are calloused fingertips tracing the swell of his cheek and warm, honey-brown eyes gazing up at him. 

His heart swells until he thinks he might choke on it, and a faint, wan smile flickers across Jon’s lips. Wanting nothing more than to taste the shape of it, Tormund sweeps in and swallows down his own name as Jon slides his hands up his arms, clutching at his shoulders with reassuring strength.

“I’m going to rip you apart for that, little crow,” he says against his teeth, and Jon huffs quietly. “I hate you again. Stop making me hate you.”

“You can hate me,” Jon murmurs, “but you’ll be alive to do it.”

“That shit is going to be the death of me, Snow. Did you think I wouldn’t throw myself from a dragon or dive into the fang-water to come drag you home?”

Jon blinks up at him, biting his plush lower lip, and Tormund slides a thumb beneath it until he lets it go and he sweeps down to soothe it. He wants to taste every inch of Jon’s body, just to reassure himself it’s still there, still warm and whole and hale, and by the way Jon reacts he doesn’t think he’s much opposed. 

He patterns his chest with teeth and tongue until he reaches the scar right over his heart, slick and rough all at once, shiny and red. Tormund presses a careful kiss over it and Jon’s breath hitches audibly, one hand curling into a weak fist in his hair. 

“Seen you dead once already, Jon Snow,” he growls. “I’ll fight the gods themselves to keep that from happening again.”

Tormund puts his lips to the flutter of his little crow’s pulse, pretends he can taste the blood beneath. The skin beneath his eyes is wet when Tormund slides a thumb over it and before he can say anything about it, Jon lets out a pained note and brings their mouths together again, and this time the kiss is a biting, raw, agonizing thing. 

It grows wings under his lungs, curls like fire around his ribs. Jon is still shaking with the remnants of the ice-fever, and he’s weak and tired but his arms hold him tight, hold him like he’s afraid he might vanish at any moment. 

“I’m here, little crow,” Tormund breathes, “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Jon doesn’t answer. Instead, he rolls his hips and slides his tongue under the wildling’s, a clear command that shoots down Tormund’s spine and unfurls across his belly, makes his thighs tense and his cock grow hard. The little crow catches one of his wrists then, drags his hand over his scars and down to his cock, to where a small puddle of wetness gathers over his flat belly.

It’s all it takes for the coil of restraint he barely feels snap. Jon groans, throaty and greedy when Tormund pulls his legs apart with one gentle hand, wide enough to slot his hips between. He reaches for the vial of sword oil in the nightstand and Jon’s eyes are so, so bright as they gaze up at him like he’s the only deliverance he has.

“You want to feel me?”

“Yes,” Jon says, and it sounds like a hymn. “Tor,  _please_." 

It’s fire down his spine. "You beg so sweetly for me, little crow. Always so needy, aren’t you?”

Jon’s cheeks flush a vibrant pink. Cool oil slips over Tormund’s fingers and he moves his hand down between the little crow’s thighs, determined to draw more of those sweet pleas from his lips. It doesn’t take long; soon, Jon is scrabbling at his shoulders as his breaths punch in and out of his chest and his thighs tremble and quake, his cock red and leaking all over his stomach.

He smells of musk and sweetness, of the wild and the white. Tormund licks over his belly and traces the edges of his killing scars, grips Jon’s hips hard enough to bruise when he sinks into the tight, wet clutch of him. This, he thinks, this is the only thing he could pray to. Jon’s body is the holiest thing he’s ever beheld, an effigy of strength and unfailing life kept beneath soft white skin laced with the scars of his sacrifice. 

Devotion suffuses Tormund’s chest, turns his blood to gold as he rocks into Jon and swallows the cries from his lips. He wants to beg him for his mercy, wants to beg him to run, to hide and keep himself safe. If Tormund has to watch him die again, he’s not certain the world would survive it. The white-haired queen may have dragons, but he has this, and in his heart Jon’s name becomes an inferno.

With one hand he hitches Jon’s thigh up on his hip and the little crow whimpers, the new angle sending a flush down over his chest. His eyes are shut tight, lips slick and bitten red, and Tormund curls a hand around his jaw and murmurs, “look at me, Jon, look at me.”

Jon does, and it sends an arrow of pleasure rocketing up his spine. Tormund growls and frames the little crow’s throat with one huge hand, biting bruises up the column of his neck. He crushes their mouths together to pant out his name, over and over, until he’s swallowing down Jon’s throaty keen as he climaxes, white hot over his belly and chest.

It’s rich and tangy over his tongue, the taste of his lover. Tormund bares his teeth over the scar just above Jon’s heart and rolls into him, in the grips of a fever he needs to chase. Jon tangles his hands in his hair and clutches him close with his legs, lips roving over his collarbone and bared throat, and part of him wishes Jon would bite down until he hit bone.

When Tormund topples over the edge, he comes undone with a growl and a silent prayer ushered down his spine by Jon’s firm touch. He presses his face into Jon’s shoulder and gathers him as close as he can, breathing hard and quick as his little crow groans in relief and murmurs his name. 

They lie in silence for a time, Jon with his hands in Tormund’s hair as he hides his face against the flutter of his pulse. The ship kicks and rolls gently beneath the bed and all Tormund wants to do is pretend they never have to leave this cabin, pretend they’re sailing to something better than war.

“I can’t lose you.” Tormund lifts his head to find Jon staring at him as if he’s already dead. “I can’t.”

“You’re stronger than you think, little crow,” he soothes quietly, but Jon’s brow just furrows with pained anger. 

“Not this time,” he whispers. “Not again. Where you go, I’ll go. I fell into the ice and all I could think about was you.”

“That’s why you’ll never get me to turn my back on you, Jon Snow. Don’t think I have a heart inside anymore.” He cups Jon’s face between his hands, kisses over his temple and brow and tastes salt. “It’s in you.”

Jon turns his face into his and presses up into him, latching onto him with shaking limbs. Tormund slips out of him and turns them on their sides in the furs, brushing Jon’s unruly black curls back from his face. His heart stumbles when Jon turns his head and kisses his palm and down over his wrist, each one lingering longer and pressed down slower than the last.

“We’ll live through this,” Tormund murmurs, watching him with a chest swelling with impossible love. “And then I’ll take you away from here, to the real north. I’ll take you away, little crow, and keep you safe.”

Agony shivers over Jon’s face and he molds Tormund’s hand to his cheek. “I love you,” he says then, thick and heavy, and it settles down in his belly like the warmest mead. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Aye,” he manages, leaning in to kiss over Jon’s closed eyes. “Aye, Jon Snow, I know. I love you. Always have.”

“Even when you hate me?”

Tormund’s throat goes thick and his vision blurs. “I can’t hate you, little crow. Maybe I think it’s hate, but all I could ever do is love you until it rips my lungs out. And I always will.”

Jon lets out a faint, pained sound when he curls into Tormund’s chest, and that’s when the sobs finally come. He holds Jon as tight as he can, body aching, tears dripping down his own face, and wishes they could fly away as the dragons do.


End file.
